Illustration: Norman Gate
The eastern exit from the quad is guarded by the Norman Gatehouse. This gatehouse, which, despite its name, dates from the 14th century, is heavily vaulted and decorated with carvings, including surviving medieval lion masks, traditional symbols of majesty, to form an impressive entrance to the Upper Ward.
(Wiki, Norman Gate, Windsor.)
Chris Boyer on Unsplash
The Quad
Running had never been a brilliant idea, Alison thought. She managed to sprint the first distance across the grass to the buildings, but McCreedy had long since disappeared around the chapel and into the main quad. Now she leant against the chapel wall, gripping her sides and panting.
“You alright, Professor?” A girl and a boy, year 8. The girl was good at maths. The boy was bleeding.
“Get him out of here,” Alison said. “I have to help Mr McCreedy.”
They both looked doubtful, but at that moment they heard a roar. The sound of a wild beast in anger. With a brief nod, the Year 8s headed for the park and the exit, Alison turned and walked through the 14th century Norman Gate into the quad only to hear the smash of glass and see an explosion of fire.
Once upon a time, the school had been a monastery. The Quad was set with an emerald lawn, itself crossed and edged by stone pathways, and dominated by a massive evergreen holly oak planted in the 1700s. Now some of that ancient tree’s leaves were burning.
Someone was throwing beakers of burning bleach and other cleaning fluids down from the windows of the chemistry lab. She glanced up. Jenkins, who else? The GCSE drop-out who was destined to break Wall Street. He hurled another science beaker from the window high above.
She watched as it impacted, exploded, and the flames dripped through the black fur of a vast creature.
“I added sugar!” he yelled.
Great amateur Molotov cocktail. Maybe she was wrong about Lenny Jenkins, maybe the City was not his final destination, maybe he was set to be a terrorist after all. But what had he hit? The thing had the look of a bear, yet as it howled in agony so it stretched its muzzle higher than the second-floor windows.
Then Alison saw the others. They were large bear-like creatures, with extended snouts and long curved claws. She counted three in all. The one at the centre of the Quad rolled and screamed as it tried to extinguish the flames across its back. Now it clambered snarling into the lower branches of the oak, taking refuge within its darkness.
To her left, another was on the mezzanine balcony of the first floor café of the arts block. It crashed amidst the aluminium furniture snarling and slashing at the double-glazed windows and doors, beyond which students, teachers and staff, some with cameras, watched delighted to have such ringside seats.
There were students everywhere, crouching in doorways and under windows, lying face down on the ground, even one clinging to the branches of the Quad’s oak tree.
As Alison watched, two masters threw open the doors of the Arts Centre. They were shouting as they came.
“Let Englishmen now abed claim their manhood cheap…”
Shakespeare, Alison thought in wonder, as behind them students follow banging metals bars against metal chairs, some blasted disjointed notes on a trumpet, a saxophone and a French horn.
From all around the Quad, cowering students stood up and sprinted forward, dashing into the safety of the Arts Building, even as the creature on the balcony above roared down in rage.
“Through the theatre and out the stage door,” one of the teachers was shouting.
“Okay, retreat now!” yelled another, as the creature leapt down from the roof. With practised speed, the noise makers fled back into the Arts block and slammed and jammed the door shut with a pair of broomsticks through the door handles.
Okay, that was heroic, Alison thought. What could she do to help?
She looked up and saw one of the creatures had seen her standing alone in the main archway to the quad. He bounded forward.
“Get behind me, behind me!”
That was McCreedy who leapt out from her right. Using his stake as a spear, he stopped the monster and jabbed and poked until he had it backed up underneath the vast stained glass window of the chapel. Then he shouted and waved to the pastor and the senior choir, all red and white robes and fear, now ducking low as they took their chance to dash to freedom.
Lenny Jenkins was leaning out the chemistry lab burning beaker in hand taking aim. And the pastor seeing what he was doing paused mid-flight to shout:
“Don’t hit the stained glass window, its fifteenth century.”
Alison looked up. There was a maniac glint in Lenny’s eye, but he also had a spin bowler’s wrist. The beaker arched downwards and exploded at the feet of the monster. It threw back its head and howled in rage, and in doing so it saw Lenny. Now all resemblance to a bear disappeared. Alison saw it had the long limbs of an orangutan, and it clambered up the concrete corner pillar of the 70s style block with fast ease…
As it climbed, the creature called out to its companion, who swung out of the oak and landed high on the wall of the chemistry block. It’s earlier burns all gone. It climbed fast. So, now there were two creatures converging on the students in the Chemistry lab.
Alison watched in horror as the first monster swung a fist to smash the window and reach inside.
“Jesus Jenkins,” Alison muttered.
Through the broken window she heard shouts and one voice above them all.
“No, open all the taps, all of them. And shut the windows.”
What was going on in the school lab? Were they switching on the water taps?
“Do it,” Jenkins screamed, as the creature who had smashed the window, heaved himself into the lab. “Blow the bloody doors off.”
With that Alison heard a door slam and footsteps. Above, the monster squirmed through the window, with the other following behind. Then came a massive explosion. Alison stared, mouth open.
Lenny Jenkins had organised his classmates into opening all the gas burners and setting them alight. As the flames died back, Alison took stock. One alien creature half in half out of the laboratory, all the fur across its shoulders and back was aflame. One howling in fury as it swung through the tree and back to the ground.
Alison could hear the students shouting as they raced down from the lab. Her eyes were drawn to a green double door, near to where the creature had landed back in the quad.
“Oh no,” she thought.
There they were, Lenny and his year-11 friends sprinting out from the Chemistry block only to find themselves face-to-face with the creature they had just blasted. With a vast swipe of its paw it grabbed Lenny, the others had just enough time to fall back, stumble and withdraw back behind the green doors. The alien roared as they retreated and from behind the green door Alison heard them slamming locks into place. Yet the creature looked fearfully at the windows above, and clutched Lenny under its arm, it started to gallop towards the archway and out. It might have raced away too, only it stopped.
It looked back.
Now Alison was running back to the archway entrance to the quad. Alison heard McCreedy protest, but she ran on any way. That stupid boy might not ever get his GCSEs, but he did not deserve to die.
She cut across the creature and reached the centre of the archway a few steps ahead of it. Now she was looking into the face of a broad black wolf and it roared. It reached a claw above its head. Alison swung her handbag.
The creature set Lenny Jenkins aside to better defend itself.
As standing amid the archway, Alison whipped her hand bag like a sling shot, swinging it high above her head, with the vigour of David confronting Goliath.
Shout, she thought. Make some noise.
“Do or Do Not Do,” she screamed. “There is no Try!”
The creature roared in her face.
Alison let go her hand bag.
The creature batted the bag aside and then leant forward to cuff her. Only Alison was short. F
ive foot nothing (and fat). She easily ducked under the blow, and reached to grab Lenny just as he staggered to his feet, blood dripping into his eyes. She dragged him backwards. But the creature followed. Even as Alison sensed its presence, she read the terror in Lenny’s eyes as he looked behind her.
“Get Down Prof.”
He called even as he grabbed her by the shoulder and neck and tumbled her to the ground.
As the creature leant in, jaws wide, in the distance there came a siren.
Whether this was a carrion call to action or whether their obvious plight was all too obvious, but from around the quad, doors flew open. From the arts department the head of Drama and Music reciting Shakespeare, with their crashing chairs and acrimonious music, from the Maths department, students banging books and chairs, and a boy on bag pipes. Finally from the chapel, Mr McCreedy and his makeshift spear, flanked by the senior choir singing.
From where she lay on the ground cowering amidst the rank breath of the creature and Lenny trembling alongside her, Alison saw them coming. She could even watch as on the café balcony, students were using bar stools to force the monster back. With a screeching hoot, it clambered further up the building, over the roof and out of sight.
Only one left.
And it was surrounded.
It paused to sniff them once, then sat back and rose to its full height looking around at the noise crowd closing cautiously in on it.
For a moment, it was still and silent.
Alison and Lenny slowly found their feet. So now they stood within reach of a three-metre-high creature that was neither a bear, nor a wolf, nor an orangutan, but towered over them. Alison saw now that amidst the golden fur it was wearing a leather waist coat with pockets, and straps, and a thin plastic tube was stretch across the left side of its face, from a small metal bottle high on its shoulder, deep inside its nostril.
Apart from its claws, it’s not armed, she thought.
She held up one hand. Around the Quad, students and teachers stopped. Looking around, she called the names of the teachers she saw, until one by one they and their students fell silent and a tense silence where only fearful panting could be heard.
Distant sirens were coming closer.
What now?
Alison held up both her hands, opening her palms towards the alien, but it was not looking at her, it was staring up to its companion still hanging from the window high above.
Alison looked. That alien was clearly dead.
Yet the other called aloud, loud echoing hopeful calls of a woodland creature. As if it was trying to rouse its fallen companion. Up above, nothing moved. Again the creature shouted, its tone more insistent, more urgent, and when the other still did not move, it threw back its head and hollered.
As the cry ended, so the distant sirens could be heard louder now, a call of incoming menace.
Alison watched as the creature weighed up the odds. She noticed now how leather straps bounds its lower legs, and the claws of its feet were clean, clipped and painted silver. It was looking for an escape.
With some trepidation, Alison realised she and Lenny as they crouched in the stone entrance archway, were all that stood between the Alien and freedom across the playing fields beyond the chapel.
Alison could hear the trundle of tires on tarmac so knew the police could not be far.
She dare not look back.
For the alien had bent down onto all fours. Transformed into a raging bull, he raced the last few steps towards her.
Alison stood firm, handbag-less, short and fat, at the centre of a 14th-century archway, one woman facing the beast.
I will hold my ground, she told herself, I will make my stand.
Out of nowhere McCreedy, flew through the air to tackle her to the ground, and with his weight he pressed her down on the stone, even as the creature leapt clear over them and Lenny too. Alison, her face flat to the cold stone watch as it raced off around the chapel and across the fields into the small wood beyond.
A police car drove up and stopped before the ancient archway into the quad, it was followed by two ambulances.
The first ambulance crew came running in, bending to check where Alison, McCreedy, and Lenny were flat on the ground.
“Are you injured?” The ambulance woman said to McCreedy.
“Not me,” he said at once. “Over here.”
Alison watched now as the Windsor emergency services deployed in force. What did they see? These police, these paramedics, these firefighters? Broken windows, traces of fires and explosions, a shattered chemistry lab. Many, far to many, bleeding and frightened students… Something hanging from the Chemistry lab window. So what did it look like to those who had not seen what came before?
McCreedy sighed and said.
“So Prof, that call earlier on, was it from your mates at SETI?”
Illustration: Arthur Road
An extended three bedroom Victorian terraced house in Windsor’s town centre just a short walk from the shops, restaurants and both mainline railway stations. The property features a full width kitchen/breakfast room with french doors to the garden, as well as a master bedroom in the converted loft and large main bathroom.
(Zoopla, Arthur Road.)
Author’s Own
Home
Alison realised she was limping as she headed home. Must have been the running. Her terraced house was just a short walk, fifteen minutes into town, and normally she thought this was the perfect distance from the school. But now it seemed to stretch to eternity, and she was only part way.
Seemingly a story had made the evening papers.
DAWN of TERROR read the headline, then Bleeding Choir Boys run Screaming from Chapel. With an inset photo of Thomas, the young choir boy with the face of an angel all drenched in blood. Alison paused to read the copy:
Police are investigating an explosion in Windsor’s leading school for boys. The blast in the chemistry lab took place…
“Take it Prof, if you want it,” the aging Mr Patel was the friendly face of their corner shop. He never judged when Alison ran in for a pint of milk, never commented when she also brought a microwave-ready meal to go with. “Must have been terrible…”
Alison dug in her bag for her purse and gave him the right coins.
“Terrible,” she agreed. From what she had seen, the school was trying to disguise its identity - well, it did have an international reputation - and importantly there was no mention of the number of injured. So a cover up. No doubt she would get home to a CONFIDENTIAL email from Assistant Head Foster setting out what should and should not be said to students, parents, press, extended family etc. She wondered bleakly if they would be allowed to talk about it in the common room. Doubtless she would be offered counselling - as if that would help.
She had met her first Alien. She had made first contact, and she had killed it. It had also tried to kill her, and her students… And the papers were saying it was just an explosion in the chemistry lab.
She limped on down her street, checking her neighbours’ door numbers as she counted down to her bright black front door and home. She felt lighter just to see it, and her leg started to ease at the mere thought of her comfy sofa, and she remembered she had some left-over curry from the weekend. It was only as she opened the gate that she saw someone was sitting on her door step. He wore a crumpled and stained uniform, and he looked nervous.
“They are saying it was me Prof,” Lenny, of course. “They are saying I blew up the school.”
“Well you did,” Alison said reaching for her keys.
“Yeah, but I didn’t do it on purpose.” Lenny protested.
Alison looked at him with a sad smile.
“But Prof, you were there. I didn’t kill anyone.”
Alison nodded.
“Shouldn’t you be at home?” She asked on the doorstep.
“Well, they sent me home, but my Dad’s in California, and Mum’s doing a thing in London.”
That figured. Jenkin’
s father was something big in cyber finance, his Mum often made the papers under headlines about research into Early Infant Death.
“They have sent the staff home…” Jenkins replied.
“Are you an only child then?” I asked, wondering about his mother. Slim and determined, she was one of those frightening alpha-females who seem to manage it all. She would not have been panting like bellows after sprinting 300 yards after McCreedy.
He nods and shakes his head all at once as he continues. “I have the number to call the chef, but I called Dominoes instead.” He held up a blue box. “I figured you’d be on your own too.”
There was something appalling about his confident condescension, Alison started to pull the door closed, but then he added.
“And Dad always says if you have questions best to ask an expert. And when it comes to Aliens, you’re global, aren’t you Prof? What will all those papers and interviews? My Dad says space is a huge waste of money. He hates Star Wars - says its fills people’s brains with nonsense. But you’re not Star Wars; you’re SETI and that’s real, isn’t it?”
Something inside her melts. How come Jenkins knew she had written papers, they were not exactly front page of the Daily Mail? More importantly, how would she have dealt with a Dad who hates Star Wars?
“You better come inside.” She doubted there was enough curry for two.
She led the way through the small lounge to the kitchen, there was an extension with a laundry room and a study at the back, and two bedrooms above. Only ten-minutes from Central Windsor, aged 42, Alison thought she was doing rather well. Of course, the ironing and the ironing board took up most of the lounge, and the only bathroom was upstairs. Even so, the place seemed to shrink to insignificance under the critical gaze of this spoilt teenage boy.
She looked at the small microwave meal in her hand and the damp pizza box, then says:
Aliens in Windsor Page 2